[Readers, send in things you hear online kids say
about the Net and digital media. Please include only first name, age, and
country of residence. Of course, Quotes can certainly be written (in emails)
as well as verbal. Kids can send them in too! The address: feedback@netfamilynews.org.]

* * * *

Family Tech: The PC's birthday

Twenty years ago SafeKids.com's Larry Magid took on
the job of writing the manual for EasyWriter, the word-processing program
for IBM's first personal computer. As Larry puts it in his column for the
Los Angeles
Times, "that was the beginning of my long and often tumultuous love-hate
relationship with the PC" and the launching of "an entire industry and plenty
of supplemental industries that employ millions of people around the world
[and] ... changed the world as we know it." In reading the column, it was
amazing for us to remember what the world of computers was like "way back"
in 1981!

Writers and readers at ZDNet
join Larry and the PC's birthday celebration with their own thoughts on the
past 20 years and on where personal computing is headed.

* * * *

Next-generation filtering & monitoring

As many parents know, there's no single "right way"
to protect online kids. There are probably as many good solutions as there
are kids, and they're most likely combinations of software tools, family
rules, and parental monitoring. We try to keep you up on the latest online-safety
technologies so you can fold them into ongoing family discussion and policymaking
on Internet use (there is no replacement for parental involvement!).

Here we highlight the most interesting features (from
a parent's perspective) of some next-generation tools and services.

Innovative filtering service: Updates never needed

Those of you who aren't subscribers of America
Online can now get AOL's cutting-edge filtering another way - by subscribing
to Cerberian's filtering service.
It works with any Internet service provider. It's not a filtered ISP itself,
such as Integrity Online or FamilyClick,
but it is more service than product. It includes downloadable software
(paid for by a $49.99/year subscription fee) that communicates across
the Net with the continuously updated filtering server at Cerberian (the
filtering part is on the server rather than on your home PC).

That server uses RuleSpace's just-patented filtering
technology, which is what AOL now uses (see "Web News Briefs" (#3) in
our May 11 issue). Put very simply, it's context-recognition
filtering as opposed to the keyword filtering tech found in many consumer
filtering products now on the market, and it filters dynamic Web pages
as they're downloaded. Dynamic pages are like those a search engine builds
"on the fly," right on your screen after you type in a word and hit "Enter."
RuleSpace says 30% of the Web's pages are dynamically generated, and "traditional"
filtering that uses databases doesn't work on these. Cerberian says pornography
sites are particularly adept at using dynamic technology.

If you're interested in a bit of detail on how
the tech works, RuleSpace's Chris Robison used the phrase "proximity mapping"
- word-pattern recognition based on words' locations relative to each
other - in describing to us how the technology recognizes words in context.
It "learns" how to recognize these patterns by being fed "very large samples
of representative content - for example, porn," Chris said. After being
given a lot of these samples the technology starts to "boil them down"
to a "category model" that has unique features and patterns the technology
can instantly identify. The tech also uses a sample of "what we call 'anti-content'
- things that are absolutely not porn, for example, 'chicken breasts',"
he added. It then "analyzes" and rates content based on this information
that it has "learned."

The benefit of all this to parents is not perfect
filtering (perfect filtering doesn't exist), but more flexible "filtering-as-you-go"
and a continuously updated database of rated Web pages - no more downloads
of updates, no additional fees. This is filtering that keeps up with the
Web's phenomenal growth.

However, it is only Web filtering; it doesn't
provide safeguards for chat, instant-messaging, or email (see No. 2 for
help with those). As for other features, though an afterthought in the
design of this service, there is a monitoring piece to it: the family's
Net-use data that the Cerberian server collects. Cerberian's Scott Nelson
explains: "A customer can go to Cerberian.com, type in her user name and
password and see what's been happening [with a child's online activities]
that day. You can run reports on the past day, three days, 30 days, 60
days - however you want to configure it - and it includes specific URLs."

There are a lot of monitoring products out there,
but what sets Security Soft's
products apart is the way they allow parents to honor a child's privacy
while protecting her online. The home products we're talking about are
Cyber Sentinel for filtering, mentioned in "Family Tech" last
week, and Predator Guard for monitoring. (See below for more on the
school front.)

In a past issue (see "New online-safety tool for
IM," 3/23/01), we mentioned how this company's
products work for instant-messaging and chat, as well as Web use - very
helpful for multitasking young technophiles - but what we're highlighting
here is how it tackles a concern parents have recently mentioned. A mom
and dad who are trying to figure out the best online-safety mix for their
household told us they don't open their children's regular mail, so they'd
like to respect their kids' privacy when they're online too.

Cyber Sentinel and Predator Guard are unique in
that they alert parents only to online-safety "violations," such as sending
out personal information, downloading sexually explicit content, or chatting
or IM-ing with a stranger who's using phrases typical of those sexual
predators use. The software neither logs everything a child does online
nor takes random screen shots of whatever s/he's doing online (see below
for that type of monitoring product).

For schools: If administrators are concerned about
filtering's flaws but have an acceptable-Net-use policy that students
need to uphold for their own protection, monitoring really is a viable
option now with Security Soft's "Policy Central." With it installed on
the school network, the first thing students see when they go online is
the school's own Net-use policy. Before they can go further on the PC,
they have to agree to comply with it. The school's system administrator
has both an acceptance log and a violation log. S/he can't see anything
a student does online except activities that violate the school
policy - because the software only logs violations. It's like an airtight
"honor system" with no invasion of student or teacher privacy.

[As for whether "Policy Central" is all a school
needs for compliance with the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA),
the jury's still out. Few people have studied the new law more than public-policy
counsel and subscriber Liza Kessler, and even she says, "It really depends
on the local community's understanding of the term 'filter'.... The CIPA
statute reads 'filter OR block." Liza, who's been traveling around the
US this summer conducting CIPA-compliance
workshops for schools, says some technologists have argued that "packet-sniffing-technology
monitoring products 'filter,' in that all material passing through their
systems gets classified [or filtered] by their technology, although nothing
gets blocked." However, she said one monitoring-tech company, Pennsylvania-based
Pearl Software (makers of CyberSnoop),
lobbied hard, to no avail, to get one of the bill's sponsors, Sen. Rick
Santorum (R-PA), to change his bill to allow monitoring. "I've been telling
people in the workshops that this is something they should consult with
local school attorneys about," Liza adds, "if that's the solution they
want to implement in their school districts."]

What we like about Security Soft's monitoring
approach is that, in both school and home environments, 1) school and
family acceptable-use policies govern online activity more than some software
company's values or standards, 2) adults can show kids their privacy's
being respected, and 3) useful Internet material is not blocked
by over-zealous filtering products.

Monitoring & family privacy protection

What stands out about BeAware monitoring software
by Ascentive is its simplicity
- of both concept and use. "Filtering is the 80% solution," said Adam
Schran, Ascentive's CEO, explaining why he feels monitoring is much more
effective.

If a parent's main interest is in providing a
deterrent - being up front and letting kids know their online activities
can be "spot-checked" anytime (even when parents are at work) - BeAware,
a simple "screen capture" program, is a lean, mean little monitoring machine.
Parents set the times when it takes "snapshots" of what's on the computer
screen, whether it's an email message, image, Web page, or chatroom. They
can look at those snapshots, or "screen grabs," from another computer,
at home or work. But just having a monitoring product on a child's computer
(and letting him/her know it's there!) is probably the product's best
feature, blended with random, in person peering over the kid's
shoulder when everybody's at home. Of course BeAware can also be used
secretly, but we truly don't recommend this approach, which does nothing
to foster trust and good family communications. Adam told us that's his
company's philosophy as well.

There are other screen-capture programs like BeAware
(such as Spector, Big Brother, and Spy Agent, which have some additional
features), but this one works well with Ascentive's ActivePrivacy, which
might meet another common family-online-safety goal. ActivePrivacy stops
companies' and Web sites' "cookies" from gathering family members' personal
information and tracking their Web surfing habits.

Ascentive itself is unique in that it's owned
and operated (profitably!) by a 25-year-old CEO and a 14-year-old chief
technology adviser (Adam's brother). "We started the company together,"
Adam told us. "Andrew is my brother. He couldn't get DSL [because of the
house's location relative to the ISP] and needed to speed up his Internet
connection." So, when then-university student Adam was home on vacation,
they started working on a software solution. "Andrew did the programming
in Visual Basic and we launched Web Rocket on his 12 birthday." He was
the main code writer for Ascentive's first two products, but "after sales
really started to go up and Andrew was in 8th grade pretty much full time,
we had to hire some older software engineers to create the next products."

Editor's Note: These are not product
reviews or tests; they're meant to bring to your attention milestones in online-safety
tech development. Your experiences with these or any other such tools are
valuable and most welcome (please email
us)! For a software engineer's picks of products he's tested, see the
very helpful Software4Parents.com.

* * * *

Book review: Parents should read Michael Lewis

All parents, we suggest, not just our subscribers
(many of whom already have a good feel for what being online means for kids).
We're referring to the latest book by best-selling author and New York Times
Magazine contributor Michael Lewis, "Next: The Future Just Happened." It's
the print companion to the BBC's television documentary "Next," which aired
on the A&E cable network this week. Michael gathered a lot of his material
for the book from his worldwide travels for the BBC, which got him talking
with mostly-young "digerati" and Netheads who have conquered many areas of
cyberspace.

Michael doesn't delve deeply into the implications
- for themselves, their families, or their societies - of some of these young
pioneers' exploits. He's more interested in the impact, for example, that
15-year-old stock manipulator Jonathan Lebed had on the SEC, the stock market,
and society than on Jonathan's own life. Both sides of the story need to be
told, and "Next" is the important first half. As for the personal side of
these stories, when other parents read about how these teens' own parents
dealt with their children's expertise, they will either be grateful they're
engaged in their kids' online activities, or (we hope) they will scramble
to be so.

One hundred people were arrested this week in
an undercover investigation into what US federal officials describe as
the largest-known commercial child pornography business ever uncovered.
As the Associated Press reports (via CNET),
the two-year investigation began with Landslide Productions, a Texas-based
company owned by Thomas and Janice Reedy, convicted last year and sentenced
this week to life and 14 years in prison, respectively. Landslide, which
provided e-commerce services to porn operators in Indonesia and Russia,
"charged customers $29.95 per month for access and netted more than $1
million between 1997 and 1999," AP reports, adding that the service had
a staggering 250,000 subscribers. Because even possession of child pornography
is illegal, the subscribers themselves are criminals. The 100 people arrested
this week were among those subscribers. "Authorities tracked down some
of them using electronic and credit card information gathered in an investigation
conducted by the postal inspection service, US Customs Service, the FBI,
and the Dallas Police Department," reports the AP.

A Wired
News report shows how much tougher it is to prosecute overseas porn
ring members - because of "loose laws governing the Internet and pornography"
in other countries. Indonesia, for example, has no laws banning child
porn. Here's the New
York Times's coverage.

If anyone ever encounters child pornography (sexually
explicit material involving minors), GetNetWise.org
advises that they call the US Customs Service at 1-800-BE-ALERT. But please
note this too: Downloading or making a copy of child pornography for any
reason - even as evidence for law enforcement - is a crime in the US.
If you run across what you believe to be child porn, just record the URL
(Web address) and report only that.

South Carolina recently enacted a law that "requires
all computer technicians to report potential instances of child pornography
to police if they see it on a computer," according eSchoolNews.com
- including school tech coordinators. The law, partially intended to raise
awareness of online child pornography, expands an old law that requires
photo finishers to report child porn they find to the police. But the
new statute reportedly lacks teeth: It "doesn't provide for penalties
for technicians who do not report what they see - neither does it specify
how the law will be enforced." Here's WashingtonPost.com's report on this
.

Kids as (viral) marketers, aka 'alpha pups'

If you want to read about 1) what is likely to
be one of the "absolutely must have" toys of the coming holiday season,
2) how toy companies turn kids into supremely effective, unpaid, nationwide
virtual marketing departments of millions, 3) why these young viral marketers
are boys not girls, and/or 4) whether you might have latent "alpha pups"
at your house or school, check out the New
York Times Magazine's story about "Pox," the new electronic game by
Hasbro. We were fascinated with the observations made and studies cited
by writer John Tierney about boys and girls at play and about games and
violence.

65 million online kids

That's 65 million (ages 5-17) just in western
Europe and North America, where the survey by Datamonitor was done. The
study, cited by CyberAtlas,
also found that, by 2005, 74% of the youth population in western Europe
and North America will have regular access to the Internet, and they will
spend increasing amounts of time online as they become more familiar with
the medium. In Europe, teenagers now account for 12% of the online population
there, according to Jupiter Media Metrix study reported on by Nua
Internet Surveys. This study, too, said they're spending more time
online: "In June those aged 12 and 17 spent an average of nearly eight
hours online," an increase since January of two hours in the UK and France
and three hours in Germany.

In the UK, at least, these young surfers are also
getting smarter about online privacy and safety. Nua
cites yet another study, by NOP Research Group, showing that 60% of 7-16-year-olds
say they would not give out their email address or home address on the
Internet, up from 40% in November 2000. "Of those who would not divulge
personal addresses, 42% said it was because their parents told them not
to, up from 33%."

Debunker of virus myths

If you ever want to find out if a virus you've
heard about is real or a myth, check out Vmyths.com,
Wired
News suggests. Wired gives the background on Rob Rosenberger, the
candid curmudgeon (and experienced programmer and systems administrator
"with high-level CIA security clearance) who runs the vmyths-debunking
Web site.

Not everyone likes IM

The numbers don't bear it out (AOL claims 1 billion
instant messages get sent daily on its service alone), but some
people don't like IMs. We suspect they're not teenagers. WashingtonPost.com
gives us a look at some of the IM detractors' grievances, suggesting that
"these people's complaints ... are worth listening to as we move toward
an increasingly interruption-driven world of constant communication."
Meanwhile, even as we calmly consider the downside, the next generation
of IM is ready to take off, and CNET
tells that story. Here's our interview with
the mom of a teenager who likes IM very much indeed.

New P2P service from Netscape alums

Move over BearShare, Morpheus, Aimster, etc. Here
comes Kontiki, a peer-to-peer (P2P) startup formed mostly by Netscape
alums which "will offer a way to speed downloads over the Internet, with
a focus on video files," according to CNET.
The story operates on the assumption that if some of the original people
at pre-AOL Netscape are working on a technology, it's worth following.
This article is a useful snapshot of where Napster-like P2P file-sharing
is going and why it's here to stay - important to know about because this
is the technology many of our kids are using to swap music, image, and
video files (see our July 13 report for more).

Napster now will cost ya

The online music service will soon start charging
users $5 a month, reports InternetNews.com ,
to pay for musicians' copyrights. Everything else, Napster claims, will
be just like it was before (except maybe the number of users!).

* * * *

CIPA Clarity

An attorney's precision can be very helpful, especially
to schools and libraries these days. Public-policy lawyer Liza Kessler (mentioned
above) emailed us about a bit of vagueness in our item on the Children's Internet
Protection Act last week . Referring
to our statement that CIPA requires libraries and schools receiving federal
e-rate funding to install "online-safety technology," Liza wrote: "The language
of the law ... is not technology neutral. It doesn't require schools
or libraries to use an 'online-safety technology' - it specifically requires
'filtering or blocking technology' ... that 'blocks or filters' access to
'visual depictions' that are obscene, child pornography, or harmful to minors."

Liza goes on to point out something else worth noting:
that the law, interestingly, does not require similar blocking/filtering
technology for sexually explicit material or contacts that come via email,
chat, or instant-messaging, should those be available in schools and libraries.
It only requires an acceptable-use policy addressing those technologies. "One
of the specific things [schools] have to address in the AUP (now called 'Internet
Safety Policy') is direct contact, including chat, IM & email, with minors,"
Liza wrote us. "CIPA doesn't say what the school has to do, but it does require
that there be a policy addressing the subject." So the law really only addresses
Web surfing, and there are many other online technologies kids might use at
school or the library.

Our point is, CIPA - probably like any law or any
single online-safety measure - is very limited in its ability to protect kids,
which means that experts like Liza have to travel all over the country helping
schools and libraries figure out how to be in compliance with the law. "CIPA
really wound up phenomenally complicated," Liza reports. Here's an article
she wrote for eSchoolNews.com
to help schools wade through the complexities.

* * * *

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